Premiership elder statesmen Andy Goode and Nick Easter claim England will
suffer as emphasis is placed on strength rather than developing skills or a
rugby brain

Andy Goode is discussing how strength has displaced skill as the foremost requirement in modern academies when he delivers a mightily depressing yet prescient snapshot of the culture within the English game. “I have played with players who have told me they are happiest if they don’t touch the ball once during a game; they just want to smash people.”

It was a curious coincidence that in last weekend’s round of Champions Cup games Goode (aged 34) was among the standout performers for English clubs alongside fellow greybeards Brad Thorn (39), Nick Easter (36) and Charlie Hodgson (34). And yet rugby is supposed to be no country for old men. After all, this is a sport in which size, speed and strength are worshipped as the holy trinity at the altar of youth, and the by-product of breeding players possessing all three qualities is ever shortening careers.

Neither Leicester second-row Thorn or Harlequins No 8 Easter would beat many of their younger contemporaries on a bench press, nor would either of the fly-half pairing of Goode and Hodgson win a footrace. Yet there remains a huge difference between gym strength and rugby strength as well as spotting a gap and knowing when to attack it. While all these players have taken different career paths, none of them started out in a conventional academy and it is worth speculating whether they would have enjoyed such long, successful careers had they done so.

That is not to denigrate the fine work done by many excellent coaches in Premiership academies who are, by and large, responsible for producing the bulk of the England team, but merely to question whether the right balance is being struck. Goode, the Wasps pivot, for one feels it is unhealthily out of kilter. As we speak, a couple of academy players are pumping weights on what should be their lunchbreak, which Goode views with a mixture of alarm and pity. “That’s the mentality of these young kids now,” Goode said. “I watch them train from ridiculous o’clock in the morning to late at night and think, 'Bloody hell, I would struggle to be starting my career right now'.”

This is not necessarily a problem exclusive to English rugby, but Goode speaks as one of the few English players who have seen how the other side operate after a brief spell with the Sharks in 2010. “Everything in training was about ball in hand so you would be having passing practice or playing small-sided games rather than practising tackling,” Goode said. “The bottom line is that they play rugby to pass the ball.” No one, however, would accuse South Africans of lacking the requisite physicality.

Far more concerning from Goode’s perspective is the amount of game time that this present generation are afforded. When Goode made his Leicester Tigers debut in 1998, he was guaranteed a game every week whether that be with the first team, the B team or the Under-21s. Now there is no Under-21 league and an A League that comprises just six regular season games leaving the first team or a loan spell in the lower leagues as the only viable routes to regular rugby.

With that path blocked to many, Goode fears that English rugby risks breeding phenomenal athletes but mediocre rugby players. “That’s what I find hard these days looking at the academy kids, I don’t think they play enough rugby,” Goode said. “That’s where you develop your skills under pressure, which you can’t in training. Obviously there’s a place for learning in the computer rooms and doing your analysis, but you play rugby to play rugby.

“It is very different in the pressure of the game where decisions they are making on the field are affecting their team and decides whether they win or lose. That is very a different environment from putting the hours in in a training field where there is no real consequence to making errors.

Still got it: 36-year-old Nick Easter goes on the charge for Quins against Leinster

“We seem to have gone away as a culture from kids playing enough rugby to trying to make them big in the gym. Now it seems to be about how much you can lift rather than developing kids with skill. That’s the big difference between us and the southern hemisphere.”

Goode fully accepts that strength and conditioning is needed to withstand the rigours of the modern game. As Easter, man of the match in Harlequins’ 24-18 victory against Leinster last Sunday, recalls with dewy-eyed nostalgia, tackling is a different proposition to what it was when he started out.

“Everyone can tackle now,” Easter said. “I preferred it 10 years ago when the back row weren't bad, your centres could tackle and there was the odd person who could get over the ball but that was about it. As a running No 8 it was a dream. Now everyone can really tackle; even 9s go at your shins, which is annoying.

“I’m fortunate to be at a club where I can judge myself because we’ve got so many successful young kids coming though the system. It’s not as if I’m keeping up with a lot of the old guard and the dinosaurs. I’ve got to keep up with the younger guys.”

Asked what keeps him ahead of the whippersnappers, Easter returns to the theme of rugby intelligence built up predominately in the lower leagues for Rosslyn Park and Rotherham. “I’ve always thought I had quite a good rugby brain,” Easter said. “People were probably saying, ‘He lacks a yard of pace’, but I always think the first yard is in the head. If you’re making those decisions quickly you can get away with that.”

Easter was 26 when he made his top-flight debut for Harlequins and it is that lack of “miles on the clock” he feels has enabled him to play well past the autumn of his career. It is hard to envisage many of the young pups training alongside him at Surrey Sports Park doing the same.

“I look at the younger guys now and there are some big beasts there but you wonder, physiologically, how much development is still going on in their bodies,” Easter said. “Certainly in attritional positions like prop, front row and the centres nowadays you wonder how much damage they’re doing and whether they are fully developed.

“I do think I have benefited from living a so-called normal or conventional life before going down the professional sport route. My body hasn’t had the hammering that it might have had at [age] 19 to 21. I’d be feeling the effects now and probably wouldn't be here talking to you.”

Both Easter and Goode are in negotiations in extend their contracts which finish at the end of the season. As Easter points out, Graham Dawe, the former England hooker, played professional rugby into his fifties. The old dogs have no intention of vacating their yard just yet.